Surprise! Taking a sabbatical can actually be good for your career

In 2016, DJ DiDonna was, by all accounts, riding high.The fintech company he co-founded, EFL Global, was growing at a fast clip.

He had given a speech at the United Nations about how to empower entrepreneurs through access to finance, and the startup had landed a feature in The New York Times.Then came his father’s 70th birthday celebration that August at his parents’ home in Gilford, NH.As the family sat outdoors enjoying a backyard barbecue, DiDonna got a call summoning him to South Africa for work.

He rushed away from the party and flew out that night.“The company had gotten my time and attention, while my family got the short shrift,” DiDonna, now 43, writes in his new book, “Big Time Off: The Transformative Power of Sabbaticals and How to Take One” (Simon Acumen).“My personal life was in shambles.”Like many ambitious people, DiDonna had never given a sabbatical much thought, but having to go to South Africa forced him to reevaluate his life and his priorities.

While on the plane home from Johannesburg, he came up with a plan for a five-month hiatus.He talked it over with his co-founder, Bailey Klinger, who was on board with it, though DiDonna says he himself felt a “sense of guilt.” Still he proceeded with the plan.

From January to May 2017, he stopped working and traveled to New Zealand with friends, walked 900 miles across Japan on a Buddhist pilgrimage and cared for his mother as she recovered from a serious illness. He also tackled more mundane tasks like remodeling his kitchen and learning how to cut tiles with his dad.The whole experience was “transformational,” he said.The time off was key in helping him realize that he didn’t want to return to his former life.

It also left him wanting to learn more about the phenomenon of sabbaticals.DiDonna ended up heading to his alma mater, the University of Notre Dame, to run a domestic policy research lab.

In January 2019, he established The Sabbatical Project, a research initiative...